Evvie Drake Starts Over(36)


“If you need company that badly, you could ask Andy.”

“You know the music he listens to.”

“He’s better than I am with the manual labor, though.”

“Quit stalling, Minnesota. You coming or not?”

“Will you buy me a cruller at Dunkin’ Donuts?”

“There’s Dunkin’ Donuts here.”

“It’s not the same. I want Boston Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“Yes, I’ll buy you a cruller at Boston Dunkin’ Donuts.”

And just like that, she agreed that she’d drive down with Dean on Sunday to pick up the pinball machine he wanted. The widow and the exiled baseball player were road-tripping to fetch a heavy, expensive toy to put in an apartment he didn’t intend to stay in that long. And in an isolated moment in her kitchen, it seemed like an entirely logical thing for them to do.



* * *





Sunday morning, Evvie slid two eggs over medium onto a plate for Dean and split a bagel—half for him, half for her. “I made breakfast,” she called.

Dean came into her kitchen in a New York Giants jersey. She looked at him and raised her eyebrows. “What?” he asked.

“We’re driving almost four hours down there and four hours back, and in the middle, we have to pick up a pinball machine. You’re going to make time for a bar fight?”

“I’m not going to get in a bar fight. Be glad it’s not the Yankees.”

After breakfast, she dumped the dishes into the sink, grabbed her coat and keys, and met Dean outside, where he was warming up the truck. She slid in beside him and was seized briefly by the thought of hopping back out and wrapping herself in blankets for the day. She had three DVR’d episodes of Survivor she hadn’t even watched, and she could choose not to bump along for four hours in a truck for the pleasure of helping a grown man move a half-ton tchotchke. The couch was warm, the truck was cold, Boston was far.

   But Dean threw the truck into reverse. “All right, let’s do this,” he said, and they were crunching over her gravel driveway.

Eveleth had seen Calcasset from what she believed to be every possible angle: she’d stood at some time or another on every corner and looked at every building. But it had been forever since she’d looked at it while leaving. She’d imagined this view quite a bit, not that long ago. She’d imagined herself behind the wheel of her Honda, taking Route 1 to the south, just like they were doing now. But instead of sitting in the driver’s seat, she was looking out the window and wiggling out of her coat. And instead of forever, she’d be gone only today.

“So, I have a question.” Dean interrupted this line of thought, and none too soon.

“Yes.” She turned to face him.

“Will there still be cereal-box races this year? I’m going to be pissed off if there are no cereal-box races.”

“There should be. They’re eager to restore them to their rightful position as a mundane element of a minor local attraction that’s not mired in a scandal that involves dirty competition and illicit affairs. Maybe they’ll retire the Cheerios box, though. They could hang it from the lights over right field.”

“That’s about the right amount of dignity,” he said.

“Are you going to come to a Claws game with me?”

“Sure,” he said.

“I…wasn’t sure if you hated it or missed it or what.”

“You mean baseball? Hell yeah, I miss it. Are you kidding? It’s all I did for most of my life. If you think I’m overspending on this pinball machine, you should see what I spent trying to get back into baseball. I would have given them my other arm if they could make the good one work the way it was supposed to.”

Evvie hooked her phone up to the truck stereo and put some music on.

   The middle part of Maine, all the way from Bar Harbor to Portland, hangs down like stalactites that drip little islands into the Atlantic. It’s divided by rivers and harbors with cozy names that sound like brands of bubble bath or places boats sink in folk songs: Sheepscot River, Damariscotta River, Linekin Bay. Route 1 skips down the coast, ducking into tourist towns like Wiscasset and Bath and Brunswick before it almost regretfully meets up in Portland with 95, which stomps down from Bangor and Augusta a little farther inland.

As they approached Freeport, which was a little more than an hour south of Calcasset, Dean pointed at one of the signs. “Hey, we’re going past the L.L.Bean store; did you need a tent with a dog door or some boots that are rated for eighty-five degrees below zero?”

“I’ve been in that store,” she said. “It’s huge. It’s full of men who want to find themselves but will settle for getting poison ivy on their balls instead. Tim was upset they didn’t have a wedding registry.”

Dean frowned. “What kinds of wedding presents did he want to register for at L.L.Bean?”

“Sleeping bags,” she said, “and canteens and backpacks and stuff. He had just moved back up here, and he wanted us to be outdoor people, I think. It never happened. He swore at a bunch of tent poles and that was about it.”

About another hour south, they passed a billboard that said, VICTORY TATTOO NEXT EXIT 4 MILES: AWARD-WINNING INK.

“Hey, did you need an award-winning tattoo?” she asked. “We could stop off.”

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